Friday, February 10, 2017

Paperwork conundrums

"I'm going slightly mad... It finally happened - I'm slightly mad!" You of course, have to sing that to make it work.

Which is of course a great song, but that isn't the point. You see, I am trying to get my European pilot license back - it expired - and it is proving to be a great roundabout of confusion, a bit like my application for citizenship, which we will come to later. You're welcome. Anyway, because my UK passport is my married name, and my Irish passport is not, I decided that the simpler thing (short of applying for new passports, etc) was to convert my UK license to an Irish license. Ahah! There I was wrong.

Mind you, I did also look in to renewing my UK license and they said "you need to transfer all your medical records from Ireland" and that seemed complicated so I researched the Irish route, and they said "you need to transfer all your medical records from the UK." Which seemed confusing as I did my medicals in Ireland. (Apparently when you have a UK license but do the medicals in another country, the medical records are sent back to the CAA) Either way, a transfer must be done, so I settled on Ireland.

That was the beginning of January, and it is now February 11. The CAA insisted on £75 to send my medical records, and the IAA charged something around 600E, and I presumed that was it. Until I received an email from the IAA saying they didn't get the medical records, and the CAA insisted that they sent them, and the IAA admitted they had them up to 2011, and I explained again that I didn't do any between 2011 and 2016 and the CAA insisted that they didn't have 2016.

And then I had to speak to the aeromedical section in Ireland - I just want to make sure you get this straight - and ask them to send my medical records to the UK - so that the CAA could send them to Ireland so that the IAA could publish my EASA license. I would just like to add that I have a current IAA medical. In paper. That I did in Ireland. *takes very very deep breath*

In other news, I think I'm about half way through my citizenship application - I stalled a few times when they wanted parents' passport details and siblings places of births and inane things like that - and I'm now stuck on the proof of address part, waiting, ever ever so patiently, to get some bills reissued that show my actual address, correct name (how I want it) and not some out of date rental etc that they insist, despite my frequent phone calls, to put on the bills.

And tomorrow, I go to Auckland for the sim! I have just realised, in a sort of well-perfected procrastinator way, that I will have exactly twelve hours at home tonight and I need to pack, do my logbook, do three Jeppesen updates, and potentially study?

I am once again going with my good friend L, and we have booked an AirBnB for the four nights, and hired a car, and it's going to be ever so awesome except for the sim part. I'm glad I got a couple of days back flying after my week off sick before I went.

And that is about it - until Auckland! (Potentially no Russians this time)

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About Moi

This blog is to keep family & friends informed of my actions/movements on the other side of the world. (ish) Or at least to give them boring updates of what life might be like if experienced from my eyes